Ever since the early days of this 2016 presidential campaign season, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has been quietly working to peel away supporters from billionaire businessman Donald Trump.

Cruz may have seriously hampered that aspect of his campaign by some recent comments regarding Trump’s supporters made during an interview with CBN.

Referencing Trump’s recent declaration that he “loves the poorly educated,” Cruz told host David Brody that Trump “does well with a certain demographic of voter,” and went on to accuse Trump of taking advantage of the palpable anger among the less well-informed voting base.

Cruz continued, “Donald does well with voters who have relatively low information, who are not that engaged and who are angry and they see him as an angry voice.”

“Where we are beating him is when voters get more engaged and they get more informed,” the senator added.

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While this certainly does appear to be insulting to some of Donald Trump’s supporters, it is equally insulting to Trump himself for allegedly taking advantage of the voters — as well as the media — for, in Cruz’s view, failing to properly inform voters of Trump’s stated support for liberal positions and politicians in the past.

However, Cruz certainly didn’t do himself any favors by alluding to the “low information voter” pejorative made famous by conservative talk radio king Rush Limbaugh to describe ignorant people that generally do a disservice to the country by voting for the wrong candidates.

If Ted Cruz somehow pulls off an upset and beats Donald Trump for the GOP nomination, he will need all of the support he can get in the general election. Appearing to insult Trump’s supporters when they may be needed in the near future certainly isn’t helpful in reaching that eventual goal of solidifying the GOP base and winning the White House in November.